


Yet still I love thee without art

by mygalfriday (BrinneyFriday)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 04:02:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrinneyFriday/pseuds/mygalfriday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s painting Gallifreyan. And not just any Gallifreyan, he realizes, eyes widening. Filthy Gallifreyan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yet still I love thee without art

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inaboxonacloud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inaboxonacloud/gifts).



> Written for Bec because it’s her birthday and this is what she asked for, otherwise I never would have attempted it /facepalm HAPPY BIRTHDAY BB. ILU. Story title from John Wilmot’s A Song of a Young Lady to her Ancient Lover.

“Are you sure you’ll be alright?”

 

Standing in the doorway of the TARDIS, a little cottage at her back that represents freedom for her and the beginning of the last chapter for him, River looks up at him with concern in her green eyes. “I could stay a bit longer, you know. No rush in a time machine.”

 

He shakes his head; thumb tenderly tracing the line of her jaw. Truthfully, he’s afraid the longer she stays, the more difficult it’s going to be to let her leave. And this version of her is so close to the end that sometimes it’s all he can do to look her in the eye. “Got to be on my own sometime.” He offers her a smile. “The wife won’t always be around to babysit.”

 

Smirking, she walks her fingers up his chest and toys with his bowtie, fingers sliding fondly over silk fabric. “Is that what you call it?”

 

“Well… there is a lot of sitting.” He flushes. “And laying.”

 

Her eyes sparkle and her grin widens. “Lots of laying,” she murmurs, and yanks him down by the bowtie for a kiss. “And standing and leaning and -”

 

Chuckling, the Doctor cuts her off with another kiss before she begins to name every position they’ve ever found themselves in. Considering her timeline, it would be quite an extensive list. She melts into him with a sigh, fingers curling around the lapels of his jacket as she sways toward him.

 

“Promise me,” she breathes when they finally part.

 

He kisses her nose; mesmerized by the way her eyelids flutter, like delicate butterfly wings. “Anything.”

 

“Promise me you won’t travel alone.” When he stiffens, she opens her eyes fully, her gaze narrowed and all playfulness gone now. “I know you think you don’t, but you need someone, Doctor. I can’t leave unless I know you’re going to go find someone else to tag along.”

 

“Tag along?” He huffs. “I don’t go on field trips, River.”

 

She frowns at him, tapping her foot.

 

Sighing, he nods once. “Fine. I’ll find someone.”

 

“Promise?”

 

He smiles and looks her right in the eye as he lies, “I promise.”

 

Seemingly satisfied, she takes a step back from the TARDIS and into her garden with a sad smile. “See you soon, sweetie.”

 

Shutting the door and leaving her behind leaves a heavy ache in his chest and once the TARDIS is spinning through the vortex once more, the Doctor feels the absence of his wife like a weight on his shoulders. With River near, it is so much easier to pretend he is okay, that eventually the loss of the Ponds will stop hurting and there will be hope for the future. With River, he almost believes his own act.

 

Without her around to perform for, his shoulders slump as he stands at the console and the smile drops from his face. As much as he let River see how much losing her parents had affected him, he still hadn’t been honest about the full extent of the damage. His wife is not the only one in this marriage who is good at hiding.

 

He hates lying to her but he didn’t have a choice. He can’t have anyone else on board with him right now, and maybe not ever again. For one, he doesn’t think he’d be very good company at the moment and for another, he is simply tired. They keep leaving him and every single time, he picks up the pieces and soldiers on, finding someone else because he knows, despite what River says, he _knows_ that he needs them. But he is tired of losing his friends and he is even more tired of watching himself ruin their lives but unable to stop it – like a train wreck already set in motion.

 

He is a selfish, grieving old man and he won’t let anyone else in. Humans are so fragile, so finite, burning so brightly for such a short time and his hearts cannot take losing another one. Not after the Ponds and not when he knows he is closer than ever to losing River as well. He can feel it under his skin, their timelines growing less and less tangled with every meeting, and they are rushing toward Darillium at a frightening speed. The day is coming, and he cannot guarantee that when it does, it will not break him entirely.

 

Bowing his head, he stares at the blue stabilizers with tears burning his eyes. The hum of the TARDIS echoes around him, doing her best to soothe him, but he can barely hear her song over the sound of his own memories. All around him are reminders of the Ponds – the jump seat Amy used to lounge in and read out loud from her girly magazines just to fluster him, the spot on the railing where Rory accidentally nicked it with his sword, the glass floor where they sprawled after breathless adventures, giggling and linking hands and just glad to be _alive_. He can hear Amy’s laughter and Rory’s steady voice, his anchors, his humanity, and the reason he fought against the darkness lurking inside.

 

The TARDIS glows warmly, giving him impressions of comfort and home and Ponds.

 

But that isn’t right – not anymore. This room is nothing but a hollow reminder of what he will never have again and the Doctor has enough reminders in his head without needing help from the TARDIS. Lurching forward, he stumbles to the typewriter on the other side of the console and pulls the screen around to face him. He taps forcefully against the keys; his movements jerky and determined as he ignores the disapproving hum of the TARDIS.

 

“Sorry, Old Girl,” he whispers. “I know you like this one but I -” He swallows, glancing once more around the room that shows him nothing but the ghosts of his friends. “I can’t look at it anymore.”

 

The TARDIS is silent and he takes it as her grudging consent, pressing the final button and watching the control room shift and change before his eyes. The only word that comes to mind to describe it is _dark_. Gone are the warm lights and the glass floors. Before, there had been yellows and reds and life. Now, there is cold blue light and the color gray. Even the console itself is dark, the rotor gray and metal and unfeeling. The other desktop had felt like a home and this is distinctly solitary and devoid of warmth.

 

It reminds him, suitably enough, of how he feels right now.

 

Resolute now, the next thing he does is toss the tweed and bowtie all the way in the back of a closet deep inside the TARDIS, somewhere he’ll never have to look at them again. As much as it pains him to see them, he can’t fathom doing something as permanent as tossing them into a supernova either. That outfit is a part of him – he was Amelia’s Doctor in it, he married his wife in it. He had a family when he wore that. A real, proper family for the first time in longer than he cares to remember.

 

He finds something in the wardrobe that suits his mood and silently thanks the Old Girl for understanding as he slips into the dark purple greatcoat. She hums as he returns to the control room once more, silently asking him where to go next.

 

Stroking the new console apologetically, he shuts his eyes and sighs. “Nowhere. I’m retired.”

 

-

 

Trudging through the snow back to TARDIS, the Doctor grumbles under his breath about stubborn lizards and their arse-kicking wives as he kicks at the ground beneath his feet. He has told them time and time again that he just doesn’t do that sort of thing anymore and still they insist on calling him at the slightest sign of trouble. Don’t they understand that he just _can’t_? Not only does it hurt him but it hurts those around him, those he cares about most – they are the ones who suffer because he cannot bear to be alone.

 

After all this time, he has finally learned his lesson – he is _meant_ to be alone, traveling the universe in his solitary blue box without companionship or love or the comfort of friendship and family. The ones he cares for are destined to suffer and he is done being selfish. The only person in the universe he feels safe in loving is River, and only because her fate is already sealed. He ruined her life before he ever knew who she was.

 

The Doctor approaches the TARDIS and slows to a halt outside the ajar door, frowning. Speaking of his wife, there is only one who could sneak into the TARDIS without a key. He thought when he left her at her cottage near the university that he had reassured her he would be fine. He thought he could hide from her until he really meant it. But River is more astute when it comes to him than he gives her credit for.

 

She has been doing her best to cheer him up from a distance for weeks now, sending him terrible jokes on the psychic paper and leaving him gift baskets filled with Christmas crackers – he’d spent all day sprawled on the floor of the TARDIS, opening every single one of them and squeaking with delight at every new gift that popped out into his hands. Last week, she’d left him a photo album from Amy and Rory’s house, filled to bursting with pictures of him and River with the Ponds in various places throughout history and on numerous planets.

 

The distractions always work for a while – he feels lighter and happier and sure that there must be something brighter and better than this self-enforced exile waiting for him in the future. And then he wakes up in an empty bed without River wrapped around him, he goes to the control room and there are no bickering Ponds waiting for him to take them somewhere amazing, and the warm fuzzy feeling that always fills him when River cheers him up dissipates, leaving him even more melancholic than before.

 

Wondering what sort of surprise she has left for him this time and some part of him hoping despite everything that this will be the one to bring him forever out of the darkness, he slips inside the TARDIS and shuts the door behind him. He’d expected many things – a balloon animal making machine, a life-size nude portrait of River or knowing his wife, perhaps even of himself, a new hat, a set of Chinese fingertraps, anything except what is actually waiting for him. River, dressed in a skintight black catsuit, is perched precariously on a ladder next to the console and painting on the metal panels above the time rotor.

 

He squints at the artwork.

 

She’s painting Gallifreyan. And not just any Gallifreyan, he realizes, eyes widening. _Filthy_ Gallifreyan.

 

As his eyes scan the ancient, circular language, he makes a strangled choking noise.

 

River turns at the sound, brush in hand and nose smudged with black paint. “Hello sweetie,” she beams.

 

His hearts stutter in his chest at the familiar greeting, because as determined as he has been to be alone until he can hide the pain a little better from his wife’s knowing eyes, he is thrilled to see her again. It’s the longest he has gone without her since they married and he has _missed_ her.

 

“Hope you don’t mind,” she says, gesturing to her work with a wry smirk. “I thought the place needed a woman’s touch.”

 

Quickly hiding his glee at the mere sight of her, he scowls, and determined to ignore the way that catsuit isn’t so much hugging her curves as making love to them, he crosses his arms over his chest and asks tartly, “Is that your special Destruction of Property outfit?”

 

“More like my special Mission for the Doctor outfit,” she winks and climbs down from the ladder with more sensuality than anyone should have a right to, the paintbrush clenched between her teeth. “Do you like it?”

 

“It’s very…” He clears his throat. “Tight.”

 

She rolls her eyes. “Not the outfit, honey. That.” She gestures above their heads to her work, and reading the words once more, he becomes flustered all over again.

 

“Like it?” His voice squeaks and River arches an impressed eyebrow. “You graffitied my TARDIS with – with _porn_!” He flails angrily as she walks toward him.   

 

“It isn’t porn,” she insists, pouting as she stops right in front of him and looks up, batting her lashes at him. “I wrote you an erotic poem about our honeymoon in the language of your people – it’s _romantic_.”

 

“Only to you,” he huffs, and refuses to find the spot of paint on the tip of her nose adorable.

 

“You would too if you’d stop being so bloody determined to be miserable,” she says, somehow managing to sound gentle and loving even as she pokes him in the chest with the handle of her paintbrush. “Did you really think you could lie to me, sweetie? I’m your wife. I know you better than anybody and your Lying Face doesn’t fool me.” Without warning, the annoyance fades from her expression, leaving something vulnerable and heartbreaking in its wake. “You looked me right in the eye and lied to me, Doctor.”

 

He hangs his head, unable to bear the betrayal in her eyes. “I just can’t, River. I can’t be around people right now.”

 

“Then you should have said so,” she snaps, and when she tucks her paintbrush behind her ear, he can’t help but wonder if she’s just freeing up her hand to slap him. “I left you because I thought you were better – I never would have gone if I’d known you were going to become the Time Lord equivalent of Ebenezer Scrooge and refuse to participate in the universe anymore.”

 

Feeling less like Scrooge and more like a scolded child, he mumbles, “I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

 

“Oh, sweetie,” she sighs, and his hearts swell and ache at the tears in her voice, “I realize our wedding vows were technically nonexistent but I thought you knew.” Her fingers stroke softly at his jaw as he tentatively lifts his head to meet her gaze. She smiles tremulously. “For better or for worse.”

 

She watches him with those impossibly green eyes, somehow luminescent even in the dim light of the console room and no one has ever loved him so honestly, so ferociously, and without hesitation the way his River does. Filled with such warmth and remorse that it leaves him feeling strangely lightheaded, he takes her face in his hands and bends his head, kissing her hungrily. River doesn’t falter, as if she has been waiting for him to do exactly this since the moment he walked through the door. She slides her arms around his neck and presses the delicious curves of her body flush against all his sharp angles.

 

“It goes both ways, you know,” he breathes against her mouth. “I want all of you, River – good and bad.”

 

She all but purrs in his arms, “You like me bad, don’t you, sweetie?”

 

Growling, he tightens his grip on her hips and walks her backwards until she hits the console, lifting her onto it as he rumbles into her neck, “Always.”

 

Reaching between them, she hurriedly pushes his greatcoat from his shoulders, letting it drop to the floor as she tugs him down to meet her mouth by the ends of his scarf. His tongue slides hotly against hers and she whinges, unwinding his scarf from around his neck. It flutters to the floor and she starts on the waistcoat, breaking away from his mouth to grumble furiously, “Why are you wearing so many bloody _layers_?”

 

“Me? What about you?” He huffs, yanking at the suit she’s wearing with increasing frustration. “Did you paint this bloody thing on?!”

 

River knocks his battered top hat to the floor with a flick of her finger and opens her mouth to retort but he finally manages to wiggle his hand inside her suit, his fingers brushing over a hardened nipple. She arches into his hand with a strangled moan, fingers raking through his hair and yanking his head down. He shoves the material of her suit aside and captures her nipple in his mouth, laving his tongue over the stiff peak and relishing the delightful sounds that escape River’s parted lips.

 

She wraps a long, shapely leg around his waist and draws him in until his erection is pressed tightly against her core and god, even through layers of clothing he can feel her so unbelievably _hot_ against him. He groans around her breast as she rocks her hips, throwing her head back to rest against the time rotor as she rubs herself against him. He chokes at the friction against his clothed cock and with one last flick of his tongue across her skin, he pulls away breathlessly, barely able to appreciate the erotic sight of his wife, disheveled and exposed, through the dizzying haze of pleasure. She bucks against him and he pushes back against every roll of her hips, the heat of her core and the heady friction of his cock pressing against her building the pressure within him higher and higher, and if she doesn’t stop that, he’s going to come in his pants like some first year academy student. It’s been so long and River writhes beneath him, as wild and tumultuous as her namesake. He wants more than this, so much more, but _this_ is so good that he cannot still his hips, doesn’t _want_ to –

 

“Wait, sweetie, stop,” she pants and he honestly doesn’t know if he’s relieved or not as she pushes him weakly away, breathing hard. The pressure in his belly is coiled tightly and with one more twist of her glorious hips, he would have been a goner. She hops from the console and begins stripping out of her catsuit, expertly peeling it away from her body like a snake shedding its very tight, sexy skin and okay that probably isn’t the best metaphor but all the blood usually flowing to his brain is currently otherwise occupied – when River Song is standing naked in front of him, clever metaphors are not a priority.

 

“No knickers?” He asks, smirking as she tosses her suit aside.

 

River slides a hand seductively over her bare hip and explains throatily, “No room.”

 

He drops to his knees in front of her, a humble worshipper ready to pay homage as he murmurs, “You bad, bad girl,” and nips at the spot behind her knee that always makes her gasp. He strokes his tongue over the spot, slow and hot, and River’s legs wobble. Intrigued, he sucks softly at the skin there and is pleasantly surprised when her legs actually give out from under her. That’s new. She moans, sinking to the floor next to him, and as she reaches for him hungrily, he files away this interesting development to test later – over and over again.

 

On her knees and pressed against him, River yanks his shirt from his trousers impatiently, her hands trembling. She doesn’t even try to fiddle with the buttons, yanking it apart instead and sending buttons flying everywhere, making soft little _ping_ noises as they scatter across the floor of the control room. Her mouth finds his once more and he groans as her tongue sweeps through his mouth, a queen conquering her territory. He lifts his hands to bury them in her hair, winding golden curls around his fingers as she pushes him onto his back, her touch gentle but unyielding.

 

He quickly sheds his ruined shirt, River hovering over him as he shivers at the cool touch of the floor against his back. They fumble for the fastening of his trousers, their fingers bumping and tangling together in their haste but finally, blessedly, his erection springs free and River sighs, as if the sight of it is a balm to an ache.

 

The moment her hand wraps around him, time slows to a trickle, the universe narrows and the grief vanishes – there is nothing in his world but the touch of her small, warm, capable hand against his throbbing skin. This is the way it always is. River’s touch is magic. She makes him forget that anything else could ever matter but her and this and why should anyone else exist but the two of them? This is enough; _she_ is enough, to sustain him for eternity, if the universe would just allow him to keep her for that long.

 

Canting her hips forward, she watches him through half-lidded eyes as she slowly takes him inside the heat of her slick sex. He curls his hands tightly around her thighs, breathless and moaning as she envelops him.  The look on her face is exquisite and he drinks it in hungrily, the glaze over her eyes, the flush in her cheeks and the way her full lips part on a breathy gasp as he fills and stretches her. 

 

“So lovely, my River,” he whispers, fingertips tracing reverently over her tiny waist and up to cup the fullness of her breasts as she begins to move. She feels absolutely perfect, warm wet silk wrapped all around him and no matter how long they’ve been married, no matter how many times they are joined this way, he will never stop marveling over his miraculous wife and how she feels inside, tailor-made in every way.

 

“Love it when you call me that,” she breathes, whinging and grinding hard against him when he rolls her nipple between his fingers.

 

He slides his hand into her hair and pulls her down to him, their hips still moving frantically together as he kisses her, slow and languid and just a touch possessive. “You are mine, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

 

“Yours,” she agrees with a breathless whimper as his mouth trails hotly across her jaw.

 

And he is hers – he doesn’t ever want to belong to anybody else. As if reading his mind, a wicked smile suddenly blooms across River’s face and she pulls away from him, the rocking of her hips slowing to a torturous pace that makes him give a desperate whimper of his own. She plucks her paintbrush from behind her ear and he watches as she begins to slide it over his chest. There is still a touch of paint clinging to the bristles and she uses it well, tracing Gallifreyan symbols for love and trust, desire and ownership in faded black paint on his skin, pale echoes of the erotic words blazoned above their heads.

 

Watching her mark him, her hand steady and capable, her eyes bright and her soft moans ringing in his ears as she rocks against him, the Doctor is suddenly teetering on the brink of release, seconds from toppling over into ecstasy. As narrow as his world had been before, it becomes even smaller now and the only point of light and pressure is the place where they’re joined, heat and slickness and friction. “River,” he breathes, her name a plea on his lips, and when she moans and pulses around him in reply, he snatches the paintbrush from her limp grasp.

 

He presses the handle to her swollen clit, a hard and insistent pressure, and River cries out, high and piercing. Her grip on his shoulders turns bruising as she tightens around him, her orgasm hitting her without warning. _Sweetie_ , she says, over and over again, like a call to some higher deity as her body shakes and her muscles spasm. _Sweetie_. The sound of that name in a voice so low and throaty, the paint drying on his skin and the frantic undulation of her sex is enough to send him crashing over the edge with a guttural cry of his own as he swells and bursts inside her, his grip on her hips like a lifeline to keep him from drifting away, lost among the stars.

 

River collapses against his chest, black paint smearing between them as she presses her lips softly over his eyes and nose, his cheeks and chin, her fingers carding through his hair. Catching his breath, the Doctor tosses the paintbrush aside and slides his hands over her back, delighting in the feel of smooth skin beneath his fingertips. In the eerie blue light of the control room, they curl around each other in silence for a while, River contemplating his profile while he contemplates her graffiti.

 

It still makes him blush but he has to admit – not many people could find an appropriate word to rhyme with the Gallifreyan equivalent of cunt. If nothing else, he is forced to appreciate her talent for dirty limericks. “Younger you is going to see that, you know,” he says finally, resigned to having a very erotic love letter from his wife on display at all times.

 

“Mm,” she sighs, smiling as she traces her fingers over his chest. “You turned the most remarkable shade of red when you had to explain it to me. Bless.”

 

Exasperated, he finally allows himself to lean forward and kiss that admittedly adorable spot of paint on her nose. “Read it to me.”

 

Her brow furrows. “You know what it says. My penmanship isn’t _that_ bad.”

 

“Yes,” he says patiently, tapping long fingers against the bumps of her spine. “But every time I see it, I want to remember my lovely, very naked wife whispering it me.”

 

“Sentimental idiot,” she murmurs, but her eyes show just how pleased she is and in a low, soft voice full of sex and promise, she begins her recitation.

 

It isn’t over, he knows. River will leave eventually and he will be left on his own again, determined not to let another human touch his hearts for fear of what might happen if he does, but for now, with his arms around his wife and her voice in his ear, her handiwork gleaming and new above them – a reminder only for him of the love and intimacy they share – he thinks that maybe, his retirement might not last forever after all. 


End file.
